Polaroid Cameras Part 3: Integral Film and Beyond

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In which our 3-part series on Polaroid finally comes to a close.
In 1972, Polaroid released an iconic product that finally realized founder Edwin Land's ultimate vision for instant, hassle-free photography: the SX-70. The first camera designed to use completely automatic integral film, the SX-70 would set the template for instant analog photography until the present day. But while the 1970s were a high water mark for Polaroid, they were also the beginning of the end, as a series of financial blunders and a rapidly changing market conspired to take down the innovative giant by the end of the millennium.
Thank you to Mr. Julian Horn for his diligent assistance in preparing this video.
Video on Camera Flashes: • The History of Camera ...
0:00 Introduction
2:25 How Integral Film Works
5:43 SX-70 Camera: External Features
10:43 How the SX-70 Works
12:55 SX-70 Accessories
13:51 SX-70 Development, Launch, and Teething Problems
17:50 Model 1000 OneStep Camera and Late Model SX-70s
19:20 Kodak Instant Cameras and the Polaroid Patent Lawsuit
21:04 PolaVision and the Fall of Polaroid
24:45 Polaroid Reborn
25:27 Outro
SOURCES:
/ story-of-the-polaroid
books.google.ca/books?id=e9QD...
www.manualslib.com/manual/799...
camera-wiki.org/wiki/Polaroid_...
camera-wiki.org/wiki/Polaroid_...
technologizer.com/2011/06/08/...
lateralscience.blogspot.com/20...
opensx70.com/posts/2021/07/de...
www.butkus.org/chinon/polaroi...

[@fredblonder7850]

One thing that was never widely publicized was that when you bought a roll or pack of Polaroid film, you were subsidizing Kodak. Polaroid manufactured the print-film and the chemical packets with the developer goo, but they purchased their negative film from Kodak, combined it with their print-film and chemistry, and re-packaged the whole thing under their own name. This cushy relationship existed for years until Polaroid marketed the SX-70, which did not require film from Kodak. Kodak then lost a big source of profit, which is why they went head-to-head with Polaroid by marketing their own instant camera, when they had never been motivated to do so before. The sonar focusing used by the SX-70 was especially infuriating for anyone trying to take a photo through a window, as all the fingerprints and smudges on the glass would be in sharp focus, and the actual subject would be a blurry mess. A major flaw with Polavision was that the negative stayed joined to the print, making the image look like crap. Polachrome was Polavision done right, since you got to discard the negative.

[@ilmago5291]

existed a switch button to put off sonar for picture trow windows

[@fredblonder7850]

@@ilmago5291 Probably only after people complained. ;-)

[@nishidohellhillsruler6731]

It was a bit of weird coincidence, but right after I finish watching the first two videos, it turned out that my little niece got an instant camera for Christmas, and I got to be the cool uncle that was able to teach her how to use it. Victory for me! In your faces all other uncles! Ha-ha! 👍😃👍

[@williamivey5296]

The SX-70 spawned a few spinoffs. The Polapulse batteries were sold as a product (P-80 for OEM use, P-100 in retail packages for consumers). I remember Estes model rockets had a launch controller that used them, and there were a couple of other products. And the sonar range finder system was sold as a development kit for R&D use in other range measuring products.

[@TastyBusiness]

Thank you for mentioning shaking them being a bad thing. My dad was a commercial photographer, and used polaroid backs on his SLR and 5x4 view camera to perform test shots to verify the exposure settings before switching to normal film. He'd never shake the polaroids, and told me it wasn't good for them.

[@RCAvhstape]

The 4x5 Polaroids were often used as test shots but they can make beautiful photos in their own right as well. Wish we could still get them. From time to time one of the smaller film companies will issue a Polaroid-style instant film in 4x5 but they come and go.

[@headpox5817]

The timing of this video is incredible. Just last night I was looking at my SLR680 and couldn't figure out how to open it. As it happens, as shown in the video, the SX70 opens in much the same way as the SLR680. So I pulled a little harder on the viewfinder, and it popped open!! The video then shows how to load the media, which was going to be my next question!!! Now to get some media and try it out. Thank you for this video - a fine piece of work.

[@12Q46HPRN]

Great video and series. Thank you. The Polaroid OneStep is so Iconic that Lego is releasing a "working" model of it on Jan 1, 2023.

[@darrylday30]

My daughter brought a new Polaroid camera on vacation. All the photos looked like they were from the eighties. Terrible quality photos but absolutely fun and nostalgic.

[@Ed_Stuckey]

Apparently, they got *all* of the shortcomings of the PolaPulse batteries worked out. I used to remove the used battery from empty film packs and repurpose them for electronic hobby projects. They still had remarkable energy left and seemed to have a long shelf life between uses. Thanks for the info on the 'impossible' project.

[@m9ovich785]

As did I....

[@pkobalt]

I'm told at one point Polaroid made a pocket FM radio that used a spent Polaroid cartridge as a battery. That's pretty clever. On new production Polaroids, they put the batteries in the camera and not in the cartridges. I guess because cameras are so much better now.

[@KarlBunker]

I remember back in the day Polaroid ran an ad in Scientific American (I think) basically saying "Hey, we invented these flat, thin batteries for our cameras. If your company can think of another use for them, we'll sell them to you."

[@JCWren]

Just saw this comment after posting mine. I used them to run homebuilt microcomputers that used the CDP1802 processor (RCA COSMAC Efl). Unfortunately, while the processor was extremely efficient, LEDs of the time were very much not.

[@robertknight4672]

I saw a video of a Polaroid radio that could accept the spent film cartridge and utilize the cartridges battery power.

[@joehopfield]

Sweet glasses, Gilles! Come for the fascinating vintage tech, stay for the fashion... Also excellent album recommendation!

[@tfrowlett8752]

Nice reference to Momento

[@hjacobs8972]

In about 1979 I purchased their Sonar Special Edition camera (had blue accents). For every 10 unwanted photos I sent back I would get a coupon for a new pack of film. That encouraged picture taking and the 2 to 3 week turn over time prevented abuse. I also had a few dead battery/film packs from buying bargain expired film. To get around it I ran 2 wires from the internal contacts to outside the camera. Then I could use an external 6v battery to finish up the film pack.

[@tsbrownie]

I remember the SX-70 well. It was like scifi when it came out. On top of the flaws mentioned, the film was expensive per shot. The battery died after sitting a couple of months in the camera (we became experts at taking batteries out of empty packs, and putting them in packs with film whose battery had died; in the dark of course). Sometimes the battery would die as a picture was being ejected, making the front door hard to open (see swapping batteries). The "clunk" of the mirror also introduced a lot of shake. Occasionally a picture would burst and leak chemicals inside leading to a long clean up process. And any contamination on the rollers led to spotted pictures.

[@hjacobs8972]

I found an article about the Polaroid print coater from 2012, "Instant Artifact: Print Coater" . Mentioned that the original coating squeegee came in a glass tube inside a cardboard sleeve. The later version common with the Swinger camera came in a plastic tube. Another article says that it contained Isopropyl alcohol, Zinc acetate and Glacial acetic acid.

[@theknifedude1881]

My uncle really liked Polaroid cameras. I think the SX70 might have been his favorite. I remember him introducing it to the family one Christmas.

[@robertknight4672]

My favorite thing about the SX-70 is its ability to focus down to 10 inches. Folding mechanics are awesome but when were that close focusing and the Glass Lens it's unlike any other instant camera. Even with all that I still enjoy the plastic Box cameras as well.

[@williamogilvie6909]

Very interesting videos about Polaroid. I have used a couple of Polaroid cameras you didn't mention - scope cameras, for photographing oscilloscope traces and Polaroid's graphic arts camera, which uses large format film. In 1978 I was walking along the Charles river in Cambridge, across from the MIT campus. A fellow had a large box camera on top of a tripod, and pointed at the Boston skyline. The outside of the camera was nicely finished mahogany and was about 2 feet in each dimension. I assumed the fellow was on assignment from Polaroid hq, which was nearby. I just walked by and didn't pester the chap, since I could tell he was nervous.

[@AaronOfMpls]

My grandma had an all-black variant of the 1970s SX-70 (black plastic, black leather or fake-leather) with chrome trim around the lens and the buttons. She had the "sonar" rangefinder too (I always wondered what that gold speakerlike thing was!) with a flash in it. And she took many pictures with it over the years, even letting us grandkids take a few now and then. I very much remember that clever folding mechanism. I still have pictures from it, both loose and in albums. Though as others have mentioned, fading can be a problem. Especially for photos that spent years in a self-adhesive album -- even regular 35mm color prints like to fade in many of those as the glue interacts with them! And thank you for this series! I knew some of this going in, but was very glad to learn more! ❤

[@TrapperAaron]

Very James Burke connections intro luvs it!

[@bradlevantis913]

Great series. Hopefully you see this comment before it drops to the bottom of the list When I was young we had one of the Kodak instant cameras. It was a free gift for attending a time share presentation in Florida. When they announced it was discontinued my dad gave me the job of arranging the return (I was 6 so it was a big deal to me-since it was a free camera my parents didn’t care so much). So I wrote a letter to the address requesting a return package. They sent a bag and a card where you could select 25$ or a free Kodak disk camera. I filled it out, selected the disk camera and put the old instant camera in the return package (it was just a shipping bag). We drive it to the post office late at night & I have vivid memories of dropping it in to the box. I felt kind of sad to get rid of it. A month later our new disk camera arrived along with 2 free disks of film. A big success for a 6 year old. This whole recall must have cost them a fortune.

[@paulbush7095]

I thought I had received all of the Christmas presents for this season but this video was a gift that I had not expected. Thank you Gilles. You are a true Renaissance man.

[@KarlBunker]

Thank you for this series; I loved it. The PolaVision movie system has to be something of a landmark among products that are technically brilliant but otherwise a totally dumb idea.

[@paulkocyla1343]

If it was cheap, it would have skyrocketted. Wondering why they didn´t chose to make it a standard super8 format. Patents maybe? I mean it could have worked.

[@ilmago5291]

nobody wanted polavision;the player a screen whit retro projection has zero brightness and resolution;and was also the developer;not possible to buy in second moment and not possible to be projected on the wall because was low iso addictive black white film whit 3 color layers;and eumig polavision has 8 glass lens,impossible to has low cost;not possible outside home to make movie and immediately see it,electric current is required;consumer videotape exist from 1970 from philips whit cost of tape whit also audio near zero vs expensive instsnt super 8;in 1975 was launched vhs tape and in 1976 sony betamax;1979 low cost video 2000 system by grundig whit maximum hours of tape;the normal super 8 market was at the end in 1978 whit muted film only;bulkyness and cost of audio version of super 8 make sound super 8 version a big flop in consumer market;people that want to be director can use normal super 8 because existed from 1965 and was a mature technology in 1978,many directors make demo film in super 8 for film houses,polavision was a beta version in commerce and has cost and quality only for family use;only possible use can be to use polavision for short video clip of the songs,but a sound version not existed and the cost and bulkyness would be too high;

[@TimeToCheckReality]

The Polavision film was compatible with standard projectors once you pulled it out of the cartridge. I may have a piece of it from a time I was staying in a hotel and wandered upon a demo of it for dealers but they let me in anyway and let me shoot a cartridge. A few years later I was at a museum event and there was a slide show of the history. As the show was coming towards its end, no one was surprised that pictures started showing people who were active but were shocked when they realized that some were that day and even at the event. The person that set up the show worked in a photo store and had brought the 35mm version of the camera with him to pull this off.

[@JohnnyUmphress]

True. I never liked viewing the film on the Polaroid viewer unit. I would break open the file cartridge and spool the film off onto a super-8 real and project it on a screen. Although it required to Polaroid viewer to complete the developing process.

[@jclark2752]

Brilliant! It made me wish you had an equivalent series on the Lomography Camera Phenomenon… 🤓

[@jclark2752]

* Lomographical? 🤷‍♂️

[@james-p]

My Dad got an SX-70 - I think it was around 1973 or '74. It was a big deal at the time! It was a part of many of our vacations. Very cool camera.

[@RobCamp-rmc_0]

My parents have a non-working SX-70, the fancy first variant, somewhere; I’d like to get my hands on it if only as a display model

[@RCAvhstape]

I have my mom's old One Step from the 70s as well as one of the recent Polaroid Originals One Step cameras, which have a rechargeable battery built into the camera body instead of in the film cartridge. The film pack battery turns out to be a weakness over the long term since an old unopened film pack becomes useless after the shelf life of the battery expires. The recent reissues of these cameras put the battery in the camera and added a USB recharge jack, so if you buy the newer film packs you don't have to worry about storing them for too long. The Impossible Project was also selling film packs with fresh batteries in them so you could use your old camera, but sadly my mom's old One Step doesn't seem to work anymore, and these things are devilishly hard to take apart due to their cheap construction, so I'm afraid I will break something if I start to open it up. So for now her camera is a conversation piece, but the old case it came with is now carrying my newer One Step plus a few film packs.

[@hetschipVeronica]

Nice one again. It seems you did not mention the use of Polaroid in professional photography, which was a big thing in the days. Photographers worked on film, slide film for colour work and negative films for B&W. But the final result remained uncertain and that is where Polaroid came in. There where Polaroid film-back's for many serious professional systems like 6x6 Hasselblad, 6x7 Mamiya etc. and view camera's like Linhof, Sinar etc. Later Polaroid came with a dedicated system for 8"x10" color photographs, based on the SX-70 technology but with a much larger film format and with special film holders for 8"x10" view camera's and a dedicated developing unit. Next to that Polaroid had it's own gigantic studio camera for almost life-sized instant color photographs, very important in the art world i.e. Maybe another episode especially on that aspect of Polaroid? They where huge in the professional world, almost all photoshoots included polaroid test shots, no art director could live without it.

[@AaronOfMpls]

Heck, there was large-format Polaroid x-ray film, of the peel-apart kind. It saw _tons_ of professional use in medicine and engineering, until digital x-ray cameras and other kinds of imaging gradually took over.

[@MeteorMark]

At work I discovered colleagues having a large stash of large format B&W film in the refrigerator, but no camera... They service X-Ray slab & strip thickness measurement equipment in our Integrated Steel Plant and use it to adjust and focus the X-Ray bundle. Tape the whole film sheet in it's dark pouch over the sensor, stand well back and expose, then develop the film by squeezing the film through rollers, where it' white the bundle had hit.

[@phearz0r]

great series. loving the short format experiment. thank you for your hard work and entertainment. also loving the new Glasses

[@snubbedpeer]

Thanks for an interesting series! I think there is potensial for another series about Polaroid during WW2. Wikipedia simply says: during the war Polaroid designed numerous products for the armed services. The question is if some of those products survived and found their way to museums.

[@CornishMiner]

Fascinating series. Most enjoyable and informative.

[@slidewaze]

Great video once again. Love the topic. I really do enjoy your content and appreciate the short intro you have. You should have 500k+ subs by now,. You certainly deserve it. 👍

[@JCWren]

What an excellent way to start a Christmas morning! Thank you, Gilles. I remember many of those cameras well. The Spectra model was one of my favorites. I had been given one, but unfortunately I couldn't really afford to feed it much film. I also remember scavenging SX-70 film packs for the Polapulse batteries for projects. They were easy to find and had enough power to run a computer using a RCA CDP1802 CMOS processor for a couple hours. Just had to be a little careful soldering wires on to the pads :)

[@jsnsk101]

i have polaroids from 1997, i assume they are faded from what they were but still viewable, certainly better than printer ink

[@paulkocyla1343]

I bought a brand new Polaroid in the 90ies, it was a slightly modernized version of the 1977 model and had an electronic flash. I think it was the "Impulse Portrait". This was in Germany, dunno if the same model was sold in the USA.

[@josephcronin2965]

I ❤ it buddy keep making good content and merry Xmas ❤

[@jeffbrinkerhoff5121]

Original polaroid were b/w and each film pack came with a tube containing a sponge squeegee soaked with a stopper-sealer. Early polaroids had to be peeled apart to separate the dev chemistry from the "print". The goo in the sponge was then applied to the freshly developed photo. This was the reason users (my mom) waved the "polaroids". Cool channel.

[@alwaysbearded1]

I remember doing that with "older" polarids.

[@swsuwave]

I remember doing that to capture oscilloscope traces decades before digital scopes were invented. Even my last analog scope had polaroid rails in the bezel to accept a scope camera.

[@hjacobs8972]

That coating had a very strong smell until it dried. Reminded me of Thousand Island dressing.

[@kenpickett9317]

It was a small black plastic holder with a pink spongey thing gripped in it about the size of a pen.

[@20chocsaday]

Like some of the others I used B/W plate to capture images from a projecting microscope. What I needed was the negative so I could quickly wash it and then produce an enlarged +ve image.

[@juliannehunter495]

Excellent series. Thank you.

[@vincentrobinet2713]

A brilliant series on the founder, the technology, and history of an iconic brand! Well done!

[@Attofoxy]

Fascinating, as always. Love your work.

[@Allan_aka_RocKITEman]

*Great video series, Gilles...👍* *🎄MERRY CHRISTMAS!🎄*

[@DrewskisBrews]

Thanks again for a fascinating presentation on the subject. You get a pass on not taking apart the camera, I totally understand.

[@misterhat5823]

This was a great series.

[@jonathanreedpike]

I worked in camera stores from 1973-2001 , Polaroid cameras and projects veered all over the map, always interesting... sometimes WTF. Did you know you can load already developed pictures back into an self-developing cartridge, then have some fun with the results, think magic tricks. When the polavision system came out, we could only get 10 of them to sell, on the first day we sold 5, then nothing after that. No sound was the problem compared to even Super8mm film. When we would demo an SX70, we had a pad on the counter under the camera because folks would drop the camera when it clunked after the photo was taken.Broke 2 showcase tops before the brass figured it out.

[@warrenjones744]

Very nice series Gilles. Looking forward to more interesting devices in 2024. Cheers

[@pauloalvesdesouza7911]

That was an excellent conclusion to this series. I had never heard of Kodak's foray into Polaroid territory. I still remember the wonder of seeing a picture develop in front of my eyes. Years later working as an assistant in a photo studio we used Polaroid backs on the studio camera regularly to proof the lighting and camera settings. P.S.: You just got bumped 20 points up in my respect-o-meter due to your Peter Gabriel comments. Also: why are you using your grandma's glasses?

[@CanadianMacGyver]

If you watch the whole series, you'll notice I change my wardrobe to match the era being discussed - 1940s, 1960s, and 1970s ;)

[@pauloalvesdesouza7911]

@@CanadianMacGyver oh WOW that absolutely flew over my head!!! You're the best. I'll re-watch the whole series on one go now!

[@woodwaker1]

I remember purchasing a One Step in February 1978, the month my daughter was born, took a lot of shots at the hospital and home to send to grandparents, still have a few

[@rikp]

I still have a Polaroid Sun 600. I haven't used it in decades but I know film is available locally so maybe I'll get a pack eventually (which they now sell with 8 pictures per pack instead of 10). There really was something fun about Polaroid. I remember a department store in the late 1970s that had a Polavision projector set up on a table in their photography department with several cartridges that you could watch -- which were shot by some of their employees clowning around the store!

[@phantomkate6]

I still have a couple of Polaroid photographs with thumb-shaped marks at the bottom. There was no telling some people that they shouldn't shake them! Haha

[@JP-sw5ho]

I love your work

[@c128stuff]

I still have a working sx70, and the impossible project still makes film packs for it, at leats they did last time I checked.

[@matthewrichardson828]

its gorgeous

[@Xlr8ive]

Cool look sir, thanks for all the videos, you provide interesting information in a short amount of time and I'm sure you will keep being more and more successful.

[@JohnnyUmphress]

To service the motor, motor driver, and gears required removing the bottom leather piece. There are four Torx screws under the leather. To do so destroyed the leather applique and a new one was installed after the repair was finished. The lens assembly could be removed by four Torx screws on the back of the lens assembly. Very few required service to the lens system which incorporated a motor and an electronic circuit board. Almost every repair required removing that bottom leather insert. They were very easy to service and even the worst case repair could be finished in less than 30 minutes.

[@deviljelly3]

I really enjoy your work, merry Christmas :)

[@kleedhamhobby]

You didn't mention anything in this whole three-part series regarding the longevity of Polaroid pictures (and indeed showed very few). I never experienced the earlier roll-film type, but my family made quite a bit of use of Polaroid pack-film. However, I doubt if any of those pictures would still be viable now (although I don't have any of them to check). From what I remember, they tended to fade to a washed-out pale green image over the years, becoming essentially worthless - so, great for quick snaps (and for things like instantly establishing object positions at a crime scene, or movie continuity), but not really suitable for long-term preserving of memories.

[@20chocsaday]

I can still see how young I was 40 years ago.

[@williamogilvie6909]

I have some Polaroid color prints I took in 1998 that haven't changed a bit. They were taken with the Polaroid graphics arts camera. Eastman Kodak color negatives are very stable. Not so much are Agfa negatives..

[@mikestubbs5242]

My parents have many SX-70 shots that they took starting in 1975- and they still look great (saw a few over Christmas 2023). I'm wondering if any fading or change might have occurred due to less-than-ideal development environments, or less-than-ideal storage conditions?

[@kleedhamhobby]

@@mikestubbs5242 Well the pictures were in frames on the piano etc, so perhaps being constantly expose to light might have affected them. I didn't take them, so I can't speak for the development process. This did rather leave me with the impression that Polaroid prints couldn't be relied on to last.

[@phantomkate6]

I still have a bunch from the 90s. Some of the brighter colours seem to have dulled a little, but it is hard to say to what degree without any new ones to compare them to.

[@PeterRumanRumo]

amazing

[@MeteorMark]

An interesting camera developed to use Polaroid Land film is the professional Dutch CAMBO PASSPORTRAIT I have here. Bought it at a Secondhand Store, sadly no film available for it. Having four lenses and a devider inside, four identical small pictures could be taken at once, or you could select one lens at a time, and take four different ones (or do multiple exposures) Mainly used, as the name implies, for taking pictures to go on passports or company ID cards, my dad remembers using one of these and then had to cut out the pictures to fit onto ID cards at the company he worked for. This camera could also be used to take pictures of family to take with you in your wallet or so.

[@randyhavard6084]

Merry Christmas everyone

[@51WCDodge]

The one I remember, and may well still be used, were Polaroid X ray machines.

[@m1tchsorensten983]

bro those are the coolest glasses I have ever seen

[@andyburns]

Maybe a little oversized 😂

[@Plons0Nard]

If the glasses would need a model name, "Gilles Messier" would be perfect. 👍🏻🤝🏻 Made for him 👍🏻❤️🇳🇱🤝🏻

[@ronan452]

I like your frames. They look cool

[@odb_roc_hound4186]

Kodak was only forbidden to sell the instant film in the US, it was available overseas for many years after. It was also a much better film with much better color stability over time. After 20-30 years the Polaroids would color shift, the Kodak pics are still true color 40-50 years later.

[@xamishia]

Love those glasses! They look better on you :)

[@richsackett3423]

Lookin' sharp, Gilles.

[@imark7777777]

I understand why they integrated the battery but it was always annoying that the battery was sitting there and still fully charged after a pack was used. I've had a fair bit of fun with that until the day I accidentally shorted one and it made a little bit of a hand warmer before I could get it disconnected. We used to go to a church that would offer to do three photos during parades. My mom was the photographer and I was the assistant. I would take the photo put it in a cardboard frame and hand it to the person. On the upside I got to come back with all the empty packs..... This was the blue Polaroid camera era in history.

[@RobCamp-rmc_0]

I wish Land still kept enthusiasts in mind for Polaroid’s products; as a kid, I had an ‘80s/‘90s-era One-Step and I found it to be _too_ simple and limited. I wouldn’t get into 35mm SLRs for a few more years, but I still thought that the Polaroid stuff was a little superficial. It would have been interesting if there had been something more akin to the Canon AE, Nikon F, or Minolta SR series cameras, but with the instant development system. Yeah, it would have been hella expensive (and rather unwieldy, I’m sure), but people like me would have gone for secondhand equipment anyway.

[@BlackCat-tc2tv]

If I remember correctly the large device where the flash bar normally goes ( at 13:13 ) was a an autofocusing attachment. Being the innovative weirdo’s that Polaroid was, it used sonar to find the subject distance!

[@JohnnyUmphress]

The Sonar was later added to the system. And it was an excellent device. Although the system could still be manually focused if you desired. I was not a fan of it mainly because it made the camera really long when folded. And it was permanent and could not be detached.

[@mattwilliams3456]

For me the sound of a Polaroid is as iconic as the cameras and photos. Gilles, I don’t think you’ll just find any of the cameras at an antique store or swap meet, but if you ever get a chance to cover rapatronic cameras I’d lover to see it.

[@Miata822]

Fascinating series. My family had several of these cameras throughout my childhood. I even bought one of the awful Kodak cameras at a garage sale near its end. After the lawsuit settled kodak sent me a check in exchange for the faceplate on the camera to make up for the film no longer being available. Later I felt guilty for contributing to Kodak's bankruptcy.

[@garavin]

Haha, your guilty feelings are misplaced, I'm happy to say. Many factors contributed to Kodak's eventual demise; the loss to Polaroid in court was a bare bump down that long, lonely road.

[@Skorpychan]

I wonder what Edwin Land would have thought of the smartphone era, with everyone having an HD video camera in their pocket with internet connection as standard.

[@paulsylvester1394]

Edwin Land predicted the cell phone with camera long before those phones existed. Search for videos on this. Land predicted that everyone would always have a camera with them.

[@Kwstr42]

i picked up a later model sx-70 with sonar on it for auto focus for 2.00 at a thrift store, it has the tripod mount built in, i wish i had a macro lens for mine, i plan to get a pack of film and test if it works and of it does, i want to use it in tandem with my canon 90D to have some nostolgic fun with

[@bpark10001]

About the optics of the camera, specifically that Fresnel lens: The function of that lens is a "field lens", not to form image, but to direct the image light to the eyepiece, no matter what part of the image it comes from. But it had to do something more. It needed to DIFFUSE the light in the image plane, so when the camera was out of focus, the image would become BLURRY in the eyepiece. (If not for this diffusion, the eye would compensate for the focus error & no blurring would occur). So how is such an optical element made? That's where Richard Garwin comes in, who worked for Polaroid as consultant. Plastic Fresnel lenses are made by machining precision metal dies to hot-stamp the lens, but how do you machine diffisuion? You can't! So Garwin came up with machining dies for making lens without diffusion, making lens, then misting the lens with solvent. I'm sure you have seen how certain solvents damage & cloud plastic? His misted 100's of the lenses until one was gotten with just the right amount of diffusion. Then, using electroforming scheme to replicate optics (similar to scheme to make records), the stamping dies for the diffused lens were made, permitting manufacture of the diffusing Fresnel lenses.

[@sabertoothtrucker4531]

you know Lego is making a Lego Polaroid camera of the module 1000 or one step maybe you could check it out and do live building of it?

[@kaitlyn__L]

Given the bankruptcy in 01, now I’m even more confused where those miniature Polaroids they sold to kids in the early-00s (maybe it started in the very late-90s?) stands. I definitely remember getting mine in 02 or 03. But the film was so expensive I don’t think I bought any more after I used up the sampler it came with. I do remember them disappearing shortly after that, so maybe it was just excess stock that was sold off? Regardless, it was clearly too little and too late for diversifying their lineup. Tiny Polaroids that were all automatically stickers was a fun idea, but I think they overestimated how much even kids who were stickers-on-binders mad would spend on them.

[@dxb338]

I don't know if youre done with this subject, but im surprised you didn't touch on the polaroid i-zone (predating the ipod in the i-everything craze of the early aughts.) These were insanely popular when i was in school, especially the adhesive backed film which people would decorate their lockers with.

[@imark7777777]

Couple years ago or maybe more than that now and organization I was working with had an before school year event at a school and they bought Polaroid cameras the new ones. It was so fun explaining to the kids yeah it's like magic and there was this myth that people thought you needed to shake them and then explaining to the older folks yeah you never really had to shake them. I remember watching some sort of Polaroid person on the tonight show and I think they were talking about the smear method and some other things but they were explaining that they didn't know why people shook them because they don't need to be shaken and that could have dramatic affects.

[@bpark10001]

You mentioned that SX-70 photos could not be trimmed: NOT SO. If you let photo dry for a day, you can trim it around the edges, to separate it into front layer (looks like big color slide) & whits chalky back layer. Discard back, place front side face down, spray with white flat paint, 7 allow to dry. Now you can trim as you wish. I used this scheme to make badges with portraits on the front. Real old SX-70 photos will often deliminate, swelling up like a pillow. The image layer can turn to dust. If you do the split & paint operation, before this happens, the photo lasts forever!

[@travismcgee9333]

I have an SX-70. As well as a remote trigger and flash.

[@robsemail]

I enjoyed almost all of this series. The only exception was that brief moment you showed the Fox Photo 1-hour kiosk. That brought up a lot of memories, because I used to visit one near my home once or twice a week for several years. They’re sad memories now because my house burned down in 2009 and I lost almost all my photos and negatives, just tons of them. I had scanned a few into my computer but not nearly all of them. The only ones I’ve been able to recover since then are copies I had made over the years for friends and family. Oddly enough, my large vinyl record collection was almost unscathed in the fire. I had the records stored in a closet that the fire never got to. Some of the water got to it, and a few of the album covers were damaged or ruined, but the records were fine.

[@FranklyPeetoons]

It was very upsetting when you were wiggling the SX-70 print around at the beginning of the video. Fortunately you hung a lantern on that activity's futility. Well done!

[@ElectricEvan]

Edwin Land our hometown hero (Massachusetts).

[@Foxbat916]

The SX-70 in this video clearly does not want to close all the way. It can be fixed very easily (and should be) by removing the gear's cover by the button used to open access to the film, then manually rotating the gears until there is a click. Detailed instructions are available online and that will very likely return the camera to working condition.

[@stephenwalters9891]

Those kinds of polaroid films develop fast if you put the developing print under a close tungsten light (Providing warmth and light )

[@LarryBlowers]

Polaroid photo copier would be a neat follow up

[@morganahoff2242]

You missed an important point. Photography had been much maligned as, "not a true art form" for the reason that once a picture was taken, multiple copies could be printed from the negative, hence there was no original work of art, as is the case with paintings, sculptures, and performances. With the advent of instant film, the camera spit out the print, eliminating the negative, and making it quite difficult to produce copies of Polaroid pictures (though not impossible -- though not dissimilar from taking a photograph of a painting.) This shot a hole in the argument used to accuse photography of not being a true art form.

[@jsnsk101]

i have a polaroid 600 one step from the mid 90s its been in a box for 25 years

[@nigozeroichi2501]

Excellent video, but also makes me a sad, things and companies I grew up with are gone, 😢 my parents, three of my brothers are now gone too 😭

[@paulsylvester1394]

You are incorrect about the One Step! You omitted the Pronto! Camera which was a fixed body camera with auto exposure and some advanced features. Then came the One Step. You also omit the Sun 600 cameras. The Sun 640 had automatic exposure control, a built in electronic flash which requires no separate battery, and full time automatic fill flash. This automatic fill flash was a major development as was being the first camera to use a flash on every single photograph, indoors or out!

[@MeteorMark]

😅 You really butchered the pronunciation of Enschede! Very good overview again Gilles, and Polaroid is indeed still in business, resurected by the Impossible Project my partner started with in 2018 in Berlin, now Amsterdams, still producing the 600 with battery and i-type film without in Enschede. And the SX-70 film is in stock as well, was much demand for this type, and can also be used in the I-2, only 8 photos per pack. The new I-2 has more controls, and there is the small and fun Polaroid Go with it's own film format. And the printer is also available, the crisp Hi-Print to print photo's from your phone via Bluetooth And you can make screenshots of your phone with the Polaroid Lab. Keep up your informative videos Gilles, I learn a lot from them, thank you!

[@Madness832]

"All these developments..."😉

[@tmdblya]

You can’t fool me. That’s a hyperspace navigator.

[@CanadianMacGyver]

Great Andor reference

[@garavin]

Like Polaroid, Eastman Kodak was very late to the digital revolution, despite having invented the first digital camera back in the late 1970's. The way I heard it, upon presenting it to Kodak's management, the developers were asked what they thought the profit margin could be on a commercially-produced model. When they replied that it would be something like 50%, the idea was dismissed, as Kodak's profit on film was around 80-90%. Indeed, in the 90s while companies like Sony, Panasonic, and Olympus were introducing the first generation of digital cameras, Kodak stubbornly stuck to their APS system. By the time they figured out that digital was the wave of the future, they were outpaced by many of their competitors. I don't think Kodak ever got above #3 as a producer of consumer digital cameras.

[@petebeatminister]

Apart of all the detail pros and cons - the big problem was that the quality of the pictures just sucks. A simple 36mm camera at the time would make much better pictures for a much lower price - for the camera, but especially for the film/development per photo. So the only thing Polaroids had going for them was the instant developement. Which is not really much if the outcome is crap. Its a miracle the company survived that long...

[@kaitlyn__L]

A huge part of their market was cops and criminals tbh. Cops, because photos of crime scenes or border searches could be verifiably “from the scene” and not altered during development. Criminals, because there was no risk of a 1-hour-photo attendant seeing those illicit photos and reporting the customer. Kind of a symbiotic relationship, really.

[@petebeatminister]

@@kaitlyn__L Well, there was a entirely different line of Polaroid cameras, which is not really mentioned in the video. They were built for professional use - and they cost professional money... But both, camera and the picture material, was much better than the hobby models for the public. Then a photo costs you $10 or so. Even today some pro photographers use it to make concept shots, in advertisement ,movie production and so on. No big deal, if you have a million budget. :)

[@bpark10001]

There are other reasons why SX-70 failed: RECOIL. I used SX-70 camera in electronics lab to document equipment (for the government "bean counters" who tracked every piece of expensive equipment the government bought). All the photos had hideous vertical smear, despite care of hold camera steady. You show that animation of the mirror flipping up, a spring being released? When that mirror/lens hit the top, it is like gun recoil! The camera jerks up. I found that putting forehead against the camera top reduced this effect.

[@Blue-6]

Ah yes, Part 3.

[@paulsylvester1394]

It is not in teg ral film! It is in teh gral like the mathematical term integral. Also, the titanium dioxide does not become clear. It remains as the bottom layer of the image. It is the opaque layer that protects the image during development which becomes clear.

[@Kevin75668]

I seem to remember Polaroid pictures coming out of the camera more of a brownish color. Of course, the last time I saw one develop in person was at least 30 years ago, so it might just be me.

[@strawberryjam3670]

The problem being that these new Polaroid films have a different emulsion since the old one can't be recreated. Hence the very slow development times

[@melody3741]

They had to entirely recreate the formula from scratch. This took millions of dollars. Something he glossed over was how absolutely an insurmountable and impossible task instant film is.

[@kaitlyn__L]

It seems the formula in the 70s was cyan, as the vintage interior workings film shows, but I definitely remember some of the ones from the 90s and early 00s coming out beige rather than teal. Some came out as a milky white, or even yellow. Some did indeed look pale grey, or greenish grey. I don’t know if it depended on the other aspects of the film packs, or the conditions in the room, or what. I never actually owned a “full size” Polaroid, although I’d wanted to save up for one other things kept coming up (like video games, or much cheaper 35mm film reels).

[@weetyskemian44]

I found a One Step Polaroid in my parents attic. They said they stopped using it because the film cost too much - no wonder if it had the battery in it!

[@Muonium1]

I don't really understand why neutralizing the pH of a solution containing suspended titanium dioxide nanoparticles would cause them to become transparent.....

[@ChrisAthanas]

New Glasses?

[@kingfish4575]

Nice intro 😂😂

[@Hankbob_Hillpants]

Third on part 3

[@danielcalvocamacho4538]

DON'T SHAKE IT!